$100 Gold Striking Error - Where Does Mike Byers Find This Stuff?

I don't know how both "escaped" from the mint but let's step back and think for a bit.

One is a rare gold error coin and the other is a rare platinum-rhodium pattern coin.

I find the platinum trial to be extremely baffling! Considering that platinum prices were very erratic from 1980 to 1990s due to the supply concern from the former Soviet Union, no sane country ever dared to produce platinum coins. It is only in 1988 where Australia started to market platinum koalas. I guess this was done in 1985 as platinum prices temporarily dipped.

Now the bigger mystery is rhodium. This has always been a very expensive metal - more expensive than platinum and to have it alloyed with platinum is something that's more than unthinkable! My question is this - this is a very rare metal to be used for trial purpose unless cheap silver or other base metal. To have it disappear from mint is something unthinkable.


What I believe is the following - the problem did not occur at the RCM but more likely at the metal refinery. Again this is just a postulation but I suspect back in that era, all rejected metals were sent off to an external contractor to melt them down. Of course these would have been sold for "scrap" metal and somehow did not end up to be melted. This would also explain the gold error coin.

Occam's razor.

http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/co...anadian-mint

No shortage of options as to how gold might walk out the mint door, whether it be from the refinery or minting division or somewhere in between. Obviously RCM has had very weak control processes in place.

From the above link:

"There was, too, a case in 1990 when a janitor was sentenced to a year in jail for stealing $30,000 in gold from the Mint."

This especially caught my eye, seems likely if mint employees neglected to clean out the reject bin before they left at the end of the day because the primary focus is on completion of mintage.

Recently had the opportunity to drop by the tables of Bob Byers and Fred Weinberg, at the ANA in Dallas.
The question was asked "Where does BoB Byers find this stuff?" The answer is this stuff finds Bob Byers.

I once chatted to a gentlemen, who was a very good friend of the Master of the Mint in the 1980s. He recalled being in his office at the mint, and on Mint Masters desk was a broken die, a candy dish full of blank planchets and a bonded cluster of silver dollars... almost like a lump of art. I imagine when those guys retire... some "trinkets" are allowed to go home with them... of course, this was the 1980s, I doubt it happens so much anymore (remember David Dingwall got roasted for claiming a package of gum on his expense claim - which ended his term as Mint Master).

Bob Byers I don't know but Fred Weinberg I've had correspondence with and he's helped me out. I don't question his integrity and he's one of the best. That said, who else but the best would get this kind of find regardless of source? The stories of how these errors came to be are almost worth their weight in gold ;)

My favourites amongst a rather dubious lot ......the 1970 Proof US quarters struck on ..... Get this.... a Barber quarter and a similar 1970 Proof Quarter struck on a Canadian 1941 25 cent piece. Both absolutely impossible without some back doors help. Sort of like Santa Claus dating the Tooth Fairy.
There were a lot of shenanigans going on in the 1968 to 1970 era in both the USMint and the RCM . For instance I have first hand knowledge of both a 1970 silver proof fifty cents and silver dollar Canada in the small sizes of 1968 . Found in doing a coin appraisal for the widow of a very prominent BC collector who died in Victoria years ago.
Much to his credit Brian Cornwell of ICCS told me to not even bother sending them in as ICCS would not certify them due to their questionable provenance and the legality of owning them.

I think his location may have a "little" to do with how they are acquired.
Literally,the world is his supplier regardless of how his inventory came to being.
Regardless,an amazing coin